


0.2 | The Church

by hummingbear



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Again, Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Death, Confusing, Crimes & Criminals, Crying, Dark, Death, Dreaming, Emotional, Enemies, Feelings, Fictional, Future, Gen, Gore, Gun Violence, Gunshot Wounds, Hatred, Homophobia, Horror, How Do I Tag, Human, Hurt/Comfort, I don’t even know, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Injury, It says major character death not there’s a twist, I’m sorry, Language, Loss, Love, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Original Character(s), POV Third Person, Pain, Panic, Past, Plot, Relationship(s), Sad, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Secrets, Short, Suspense, Tension, Torture, Tragedy, Trauma, Violence, Warning just in case, Weapons, also this will be confusing at first as a stand alone thing, but it’s not really a big thing, but there will be more of these, descriptive, enjoyyy~ :), honestly I don’t really know what I can tag this with yet so I’ll change them later, implied gay, kind of, pretty but also kind of traumatic, so look out for them ;)), someone gets shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 09:33:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14767043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hummingbear/pseuds/hummingbear
Summary: Someone else is crouched at his feet, arms curling around their form like a protective barrier.A dark blindfold covers their eyes and tears run down their cheeks from beneath it, spilling from the eyes he can’t see.He senses movement at his side.Moments later, he feels a deathly-cold, heavy object settle in the palm of his hand.“Shoot him.”





	1. | gold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here’s some stuff for background noise, if you so wish to use it...
> 
>  
> 
> ...flickers- son lux  
> ...dark paradise- lana del rey  
> ...saturn (instrumental)- sleeping at last
> 
>  
> 
> ...these songs are largely unrelated to the ‘story’, or what exists of it at the moment at least, so they might also change depending on whether I find better matches for it when the characters and their world develop <3

A golden circlet rests upon his crown like a halo, the ring suspended delicately atop copper locks, refracting the amber light that enters through the stained glass of the church windows and illuminates the swirling unpredictable patterns of ballerina dust. Faceless people sit in the endless rows of pews, stretching so far back his eyes can’t make out where they end, if they do. He imagines them carrying on infinitely, beyond the realm of vision. He feels as if he’s been elevated above them, like they’re staring up towards his face as if he’s stood on a pedestal. He looks down to find a carpeted staircase reaching out past the platform his chair is sitting on. Except it’s not a chair, it’s a throne, in the place of where he assumes the church’s altar should be. He vaguely recognises two presences, one on either side of him, and feels suddenly uncomfortable at all the attention driven in his direction, boxing him in, and making him feel surrounded. Another presence seems to appear from nowhere, and he has the odd and sudden urge to look back down.

Someone else, who’s just as faceless as the others in this endless crowd, is crouched at his feet, arms curling around their form like a protective barrier, hugging their knees close to their chest. Their hands are bound together by thick ropes, the ends of which are tied to metal hooks protruding through the red carpet and from out the floor. A dark blindfold covers their eyes and tears run down their cheeks from beneath it, spilling from the eyes he can’t see. The person’s features, at least those he can see, are blurred beyond deciphering, faded and indistinguishable in their dream-like state, and yet he feels some kind of connection with them, whoever they are. A bond ties them together; maybe they’re a family member or a close friend, but he can’t figure out which. His only signal of this is the tug in his gut, a pang shot straight through his heart, the sight of this person restrained as sobs wrecked their body shaking him to the core in an unfamiliar way.

He senses movement at his side, one of the presences stepping forward, and moments later he feels a deathly-cold, heavy object settle in the palm of his hand. Shivers rattle down his spine. The awfully familiar feel of gun metal pressed against his skin and a trigger beneath his finger chills him to the bone, recalling too many long-buried memories back to the forefront of his mind. Images flash before his eyes for less than a second, but he catches the depiction of life draining from someone’s eyes, and another of a body littered with bullet holes that let the daylight sun shine through. Blood trickles down a drain, running down the gutter beside some silent city’s pavement. He blinks away the thought. The figure crouched on the floor below trembles, clothing torn, chest and shoulders exposed to the biting draught. He draws a deep, tremulous breath, emulating the staccato breaths of the person in front of him as another blurred figure moves towards them. The blindfold falls from their eyes, and he nearly screams.

“Shoot him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so I know that was really short... is that a good or a bad thing? for those of you that somehow managed to find this piece of dustbin debris, please let me know <3
> 
> (she says, to a total of zero (0) people ha)
> 
> ...
> 
> hope you enjoyed??? idek what I’m doing hello


	2. | mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to drown out the desire you’ll have towards burning this mess if/when you finish it:
> 
> idfc (tarro remix)- blackbear  
> dkla - troye sivan  
> promise not to fall- human touch
> 
> enjoyyy~ :))
> 
> (also. this is much more detailed by way of graphic descriptions, but I don’t really know what degree warrants a warning, so here’s one just in case <3)

“Shoot him.”

 

 

His heart beats like a hammer in his chest. He feels bile rise in the back of his throat. A hoarse, hollow resonance spills out of his mouth from between his lips. Something in his gut wrenches painfully, acid churning in his every organ, the hand holding the gun tingling, going numb. His heart stutters and for a brief moment, his vision fails, and little black spots eat away at it one by one.

The boy curled up in front of him has a familiar face. Very familiar. He wishes it wasn’t.

For on the ground at his feet, starring down the barrel of a gun, tears running down his cheeks and a pleading look in his eye, is the trembling body of him.

It’s him.

It feels wrong. There’s something so wrong about the image; being confined to a throne ironically at the head of some kind of church, the boy begging him for his life. But he shouldn’t have to beg, for there’s no way he’d be able to shoot him. He can’t.

Nevertheless, it hurts him beyond comprehension, and he finds himself quickly unable to breathe with his stuttering lungs and it feels as if his body is shutting down. It hurts to think that these people believe he’s capable of killing him, this boy, able to pull the trigger and watch with closed eyes as the bullet sails towards him-

He can’t.

But something’s telling him he has to. His muscles tense: relax and contract. His fingers stretch and claw and carve little cuts into the palms of his hands in the shape of crescent moons where his nails press into the skin there. He can’t feel anything. His hands are numb.

Something whispers awful words into his ears, pouring sickening images, ideas, into his head. The harsh wisps of graphic incantations litter his tormented brain with caustic depictions: the boy’s light eyes darkening, blood collecting at his brow and spilling from the wound, onto the tiles of the floor he crumples to, dying his silver-blonde hair crimson, wetting it with rust and iron where it pools around his head in a gruesome halo of dissipating life, tears and salt running down his cheeks and mixing with the blood in the brutal mock fashion of a cocktail, going pale and cold and-

“No.”

At first, he doesn’t recognise the voice as his own. It shakes with pain, with horror at the sight before him. He can’t do it. He won’t. He would never...

“Excuse me?”

The voice is much stronger than his. It’s... familiar, too... too familiar... and it sends shivers trickling down his spine.

The things that snapped inside of him, triggering the voices that preempted the change- another of his blackouts- hisses in the back of his head, ringing with a harsh whistle-like noise that has him wanting to cover his ears. They can’t force him to do this, and they know it. He feels tears prickle in the corners of his eyes while he grits his teeth.

His voice is tremulous, weak, and he doesn’t feel like this is enough to defend him.

“No.”

He’s louder this time. His head pounds as blood rushes through it with a tremendous force, threatening to burst his veins with the pressure of adrenaline coursing through them. The sound is dizzying. He presses on.

“I won’t do it.”

A silhouette emerges from out of the shadows cast by one of the many grand pillars supporting the vast expanse of the painted ceiling. This, too, is strikingly familiar, reminding him of the imposing figure of his father. Of himself. The man’s faceless form walks towards him with the eerie kind of gracefully slow pace only an oncoming thunderstorm can have. A force of nature, and it fades into the illuminating light, cutting him off from it until the only thing between them is the boy wrapped in chains.

The figure speaks again.

“I know.”

The statement strikes him as odd; why, if the man already knew he wouldn’t pull the trigger, did he give him the gun?

“I want you to pay close attention to me, boy.”

He feels himself twitch with nervous anticipation, his eyes flicking back to the boy, finding himself once again entirely transfixed by the only visible face in the room. Their eyes meet, and something pierces his heart. Maybe it’s the dread, the fear that the large brown eyes are blown wide with, or maybe it’s the trust and the love and all the brave emotions staring him in the face that causes him to nearly melt to his knees.

He feels a responsibility to be at his side, to untie the ropes himself, and as he’s about to sink the floor and crawl the short distance towards the boy, a rough hand grabs his face by the chin.

“To me, not him.”

Spit flies from the man’s mouth, the harsh, rage-filled voice instilling dread in his body. He closes his eyes for a moment, using the sweet relief of momentary darkness to regain a healthy pace to his heartbeat and breathing. When his eyes flicker open again, a fire burns within him, kindled from a place deep within that restores the burning anger building in his words.

“Let him go,” he demands.

The man sneers.

“Just as I suspected. You’re all talk.” He drops his grasping hand from his chin, where he feels red marks in the shape of long fingers forming. He draws his head back quickly, so much so that he feels the back of his head collide with the rigid golden surface of the throne he seems to be unable to move from. Stars dance in his vision for a brief moment before returning back to the fuzzy images spread out before him.

The man circles around the back of his chair, slowly, agonisingly so, and he feels immediately uneasy, his back unprotected with no way to see where the man has gone. His presence makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, the residual fear growing within him despite the fanning of the flames beside it.

A hand comes down towards his own. He sees it reach for the metal object in his hand- the gun- before wrenching it from his weakened grip with violent force.

“Let this be a lesson to you,” the faceless man begins, spinning the gun confidently in his hand with a practised ease that unsettles him.

He tears his gaze away from the man, towards the boy, who remains frozen in terror with doe-like eyes, his bound hands supporting the weight of his frail form on the floor in front of him, while his bare legs almost bracket them in. Strands of his hair fall into his face, dirty and unkempt, his body covered by nothing but a long-hemmed hole-divided shirt, with frayed edges and sleeves that barely cover his shoulders... the sight shakes him.

Angry sobs bubble in the back of his throat, like his body’s guessed what’s going to happen before it has.

“You can’t-“

The man cocks back the gun. His heart leaps from his chest into his throat, and he snaps his gaze back to the boy on the floor, who’s tears have returned in hefty sobs, scurrying backwards as far as he can before his binds stop him. The boy screams.

“Theo!”

He’s breaking, his mind is collapsing, deteriorating with the pressure of his situation. A lost boy lies helpless before a killer. He faces a gun. His heartbeat blurs into a single sound.

“-stop things like this from happening-“

He can’t move. He’s petrified in stone. His statue of a body betrays him- he wants to run, get up and stop the man, wrestle him to the ground and put a bullet in his brain. He’d do anything just to-

“Theo!”

This time, he screams back. Tears spill onto his cheeks, his frozen body, icy cold and immovable, he feels like a corpse. He feels dead.

“-by simply avoiding partaking in them.” The man takes aim. “Watch closely.”

Bang: a bullet tears through the rippling chaos.

His feet hit the floor. He’s free from the confines of the throne that had him restrained like the chains that hold the boy. He can’t see- everything is blurred beyond recognition, the light hindering him on his way.

Fire reigns within him, footfalls surely echoing throughout the great hall of the building, though he can’t hear them through the silence rendering him deaf. Currents of electricity spur him on, pushing him into running despite knowing there’s no way he could possibly make it in time, and even if he could, he’d have no way to stop the bullet in its vengeful path.

A lead object, no bigger than baby bird, about to destroy everything he’s ever loved in a single passing moment.

He was so close. Under half a meter away from the terrified boy, who’s eyes remain fixated on his own.

He watches with horror and a sick heart as blood trickles into the boy’s eyes, watching them as he stutters out a final breath and the light empties from his eyes instantly. It’s like a light switch, how his life just flickers off in less than a second- the light there and bright and strong, gone before he could call his name for a final time.

He dives for the boy, skidding across the blood-slick floor on his hands and knees in a last desperate attempt to see him alive, have the time to brand the image of his living face into his memory.

Even that was wrenched from him.  
“There’s no room for tears in our line of work,” the distant voice of the man pierced his tumultuous state. “Just like there is no room for love.”

 

The images his corrupted mind conjured lay in phantom manifest before his aching eyes. Pain tore through him, ripping at his insides, curdling the blood boiling in his veins, turning his skin to ice.

Everything around him starts to fade. He collects the body of the boy in his arms while tears collect on his cheeks. He holds the body close, and closer still, until it hurts. His surroundings filter out, the amber light turning chemical white, baring down harshly on him. It illuminates the awfully pale alabaster skin of the boy in his shaking arms. He feels cold. They both do. It still hurts.

“Jun...”

In a blink, his vision is gone. Everything is black.

 

 

 

 

 

~~~

 

 

 

 

“Theo!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so...
> 
> opinions???
> 
> I know, I put up two in a day, but it was written and I wanted to send to someone so here it is early <3
> 
>  
> 
> (who tf is she talking to haH ;DDD)
> 
>  
> 
> ...
> 
>  
> 
> ugh.


End file.
